


Little Earthquakes

by LochTayBoatSong



Series: Little Earthquakes Expanded Universe [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Babies, Cuddling & Snuggling, Devoted Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, F/M, First Kiss, Fix-It, Pregnancy, Reylo babies, Suck It JJ Abrams, healing from past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21920614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LochTayBoatSong/pseuds/LochTayBoatSong
Summary: He is so very tired, so very weak from Sidious’s attack on his life force and Rey’s, and he is fading fast.  He’s not going to reach her in time.  He’d panic if he had the energy.  Instead he feels despair beginning to flood him.Then he senses it.“Ben.  These are your final steps.  Go.”***A fix-it fic in which I rewrite and expand TROS's ending, because Ben and Rey deserved so much better than that.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Little Earthquakes Expanded Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053503
Comments: 92
Kudos: 498
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	1. Give Me Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first piece of fanfiction I have written in approximately nine years, because I have A LOT TO SAY about how the Sequel Trilogy ended.
> 
> The title and chapter titles are from the Tori Amos song "Little Earthquakes," which I have associated with Reylo ever since TFA came out.

_“Be with me.”_

Ben feels more than hears Rey’s plea as he clings precipitously to the side of the pit. _“I’m coming sweetheart, hold on.”_ He can feel her life-force wavering, dangerously drained from Sidious’s attack on them both. His, too. No longer drawing on the Dark Side and physical pain for strength means that he is feeling weaker and more battered than he has ever felt in his life. But he is frantic to reach her – his bondmate, his equal in the Force, the other half of his soul. She’s been left to face Sidious alone up there and he cannot leave her, cannot allow that twisted abomination of an undead Sith Lord to finish her while she lies helpless. And so he continues to claw his way upward.

He climbs, face and knuckles bloody and a leg he’s almost certain is broken threatening to give way with every inch of height he gains. “Rey, please, hold on.” But he is so very tired, so very weak from Sidious’s attack on his life force and Rey’s, and he is fading fast. He’s not going to reach her in time. He’d panic if he had the energy. Instead he feels despair beginning to flood him.

Then he senses a different voice.

_“Ben. These are your final steps. Go.”_

He momentarily goes rigid as the voice washes through him, and his energy increases incrementally. It’s a voice he’s never heard before in his life, but instinct tells him that this is the voice of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Master for whom he was named.

Then more voices. _“Go, Ben.”_

_“Climb, Ben.”_

_“You can, Ben.”_

_“Continue on, you must.”_

_“You and she are the Force’s Balance and you will prevail.”_

_“We are with you.”_

Male voices. Female voices. Nonbinary voices. Humanoid and alien. Some voices he vaguely recognizes from old Jedi holocrons and archived recordings from the days of the Old Republic. Some voices are unknown to him. He recognizes Yoda from the unusual syntax of his words. He hears Luke. _He hears his mother_. And he feels strength returning to his limbs. It almost feels as if a multitude of hands and arms are supporting him, pushing him, urging him up to the summit of the pit.

He’s almost there now. He’s close enough to the top to perceive a renewed riot of Force Lightning somewhere above his head. Sidious’s, not Rey’s. But Rey is not affected by it, he feels. She is turning it back on Sidious somehow, using his own Dark energy against him while remaining unmoved by it herself. His heart swells with pride and love. His soulmate is so strong, stronger than she knows. It was one of the first things he ever said to Snoke about her – even then, his unconscious self had recognized her as his equal, his counterbalance, his counterpart.

He’s almost at the lip of the pit, and the lightning above him has grown blinding. Just before he reaches the top, he hears a final voice: _“Ben, I am always with you.”_ His heart twists and his eyes sting with unshed tears as he realizes he is hearing his grandfather’s true voice. It’s younger than he imagined, earnest and emphatic and full of love.

_“Thank you,”_ he thinks to the hundreds and thousands of Jedi who are propelling him onward.

He hauls himself over the edge of the pit. The scene that greets him is quiet, almost unnervingly so. The lightning is gone. Sidious is gone. The legions of Sith are gone. It’s over. Rey has prevailed.

Then he sees her, sprawled on her side near the throne, facing away from him. _“No.”_ He half-limps, half crawls across the floor to her and hauls her across his lap. Her skin, normally sun-kissed from a lifetime on a desert planet, is unnaturally pale. Her beautiful hazel eyes stare past him, unseeing. _“No!”_ Her gathers her close and presses his face into the space between her neck and shoulder. This cannot be happening, it cannot…it doesn’t have to. A memory comes: her hand on his torso on the wreckage of the Death Star, the way his flesh had knitted back together, the way his facial scar – the scar she’d given him – had disappeared.

_Could he…?_

He could. He knows he could.

What she knows, he knows – it’s in their nature as a Force Dyad, it’s the reason why her fighting style is so similar to his, and has been, practically since their first duel on Starkiller a year and a lifetime ago.

He knows what he has to do.

He knows he has the strength to do it.

He rests his palm on her abdomen and closes his eyes. Finds the remnants of her life force in the atmosphere around them and pulls, gently but firmly, coaxing it back into her body. Gives of his own life force as well. She had given him a part of hers when she healed his body on Kef Bir, and he is only too willing and honored to return the favor now. He wills her battered lungs to breathe, wills her heart to beat again as he pours his essence and hers into her physical form. It takes moments and a lifetime, but in this moment he is the most patient and serene he remembers ever being.

Then her abdomen is rising under his palm, and her hand comes up to cover his. It’s their first skin-to-skin contact not facilitated by the Force Bond, and it feels warm, and comforting, and _so right_. Like the last facet of everything he is has just clicked into place. His eyes open to see hers focusing on his face. After a beat, she abruptly sits up in his lap, one arm coming under his to wrap around his back.

They sit almost nose-to-nose for several moments as Rey seems to search his face. Honestly he thinks he’d be content to stay like this forever, with Rey, bright and inquisitive and _alive_ , so gloriously alive, studying his face as he supports her still-fragile body with one hand at her hip and the other at the back of her neck, just barely daring to finger the tendrils of hair escaping one of her buns. Then she seems to find whatever it was she was looking for and she breathes his name, “Ben,” as she breaks into a dazzling smile. His own lips quirk up tremulously as she brings a hand up to cradle his face, tracing her fingers over where his scar – _her scar_ – used to be. Now that he’s had a taste of what her touch feels like, he never wants her to stop touching him. Nothing could be better than this, he thinks.

And he is instantly proven wrong when she leans forward and kisses him. They are already pressed so close, but his hand at her hip goes reflexively around her waist to pull her even closer as he kisses her back. It lasts for several seconds and neither of them want to pull away, but air is necessary and Rey eventually parts them to take a breath. And when he opens his eyes and sees hers gazing back with frank adoration…Ben Solo _smiles_. A real smile, with teeth and dimples and absolutely no regard for the slightly crooked canines he'd been self-conscious of in his youth or the cut under his lip which splits open anew from the strain. When was the last time he truly smiled? He can’t remember. But now, with Rey in his arms and her hand continuing to stroke his cheek, fingertips shyly venturing into his hair as her unrestrained joy cascades through their bond, he can’t imagine stopping.

Then his strength falters and he begins to slump back toward the ground, halfway falling out of Rey’s arms. Resurrecting her took a toll, as he knew it would, but as he wavers at the edge of consciousness, maybe even at the edge of life itself, he’s still lucid enough to think it was all worth it, just for her smile and her touch and her kiss. But then the phantom touches from the pit are back, and the voice of Anakin Skywalker is in his ear once again. _“Ben, I am always with you,”_ it says once more. _“You finished what I started. You saved the one you love, and much else besides. Now be with her.”_

And he perceives three sets of ghostly hands pulling him back to consciousness, pushing him to sit up again, one at his back, one at his upper arms, and one at the base of his neck which lingers a fraction longer than the others and which he instinctively knows is his mother’s. And then he’s back in Rey’s arms, cheek-to-cheek with her, as they breathe one another in and allow the feedback loop of joy, relief, and love to play across the Force Bond, even more entwined now that they each carry one another’s life force.

A few moments more and they both finally become aware of the battle raging over their heads. The booms of exploding Star Destroyers confirm that the Resistance has turned the tide and it is safe for them to leave. They help one another up and, leaning heavily against each other, stagger to Rey’s X-wing, pausing only to collect Luke and Leia’s lightsabers from where they fell. They both instinctively know that these lightsabers will not be used again, not in their lifetimes, but neither is it fitting to leave them on a Sith planet like Exogol. The X-wing is designed for one so Rey has to sit in Ben’s lap, mindful of his injured leg, but he honestly can’t bring himself to mind. Rey plots the coordinates for Ajan Kloss and, once they clear the turbulent atmosphere of Exogol, they both subside into an exhausted but triumphant stupor.

_“Be with me?”_ floats across the bond to him.

_“Always.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My own personal headcanon is that the Voices of Jedi Past were speaking to Ben at the same time they were speaking to Rey. Because Ben deserved to hear his grandfather's true voice for once in his life, goddammit.
> 
> Come say hi on Tumblr if you'd like! lochtayboatsong


	2. Give Me Pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is inspired in part by [this bit of fanart](https://theriseofswolo.tumblr.com/post/189263664701/wedding-this-babies-that-you-know-what-these) by theriseofswolo on Tumblr.

Ben Solo wakes to light in his eyes. The sun on Bespin is coming through the viewport at just the right angle to fully illuminate the head of the bed. The part of his brain that isn’t completely exhausted is both slightly charmed and slightly annoyed by this. But it’s the first real bed he’s slept on in years, so he finds it in himself to let the annoyance go.

After becoming aware of the light and the bed, he next becomes aware of the warm body tucked alongside him. _Rey_. He’s on his back and she’s snuggled into his side, her arm folded into her chest along his ribcage and her face almost in his armpit. He must have become aware of her there in his sleep, because his arm is stretched out along the head of the bed to give her room. She’s snoring very slightly and it makes him smile. Smiling is something he’s out of practice at, but he has a feeling that it’ll get easier. That he will have ample occasion to practice. His heart swells as he thinks that they have plenty of time for it, now.

They had made the most cursory of stops on Ajan Kloss, just long enough for both of them to get seen in a proper med bay (he’d been relieved when Dr. Kalonia had pronounced his leg badly bruised rather than broken), and for Rey to assure her friends of her safety while Ben had a hurried conference with Lando Calrissian. They both knew they couldn’t stay with the Resistance – Ben’s face was known but his return from the Dark was not, and it had taken no small amount of nudging and redirecting with the Force to keep most of the personnel on the jungle moon from focusing on him for longer than a moment. Lando – always a canny man – had grasped the situation at once and was on his private comm to his chief of staff in Cloud City almost before Ben had finished explaining that he and Rey needed to lay low for a while.

“We won’t be there long,” Ben said haltingly, all too aware of everything else he and this man he’d once called “Uncle” needed to discuss when there was time. “Just long enough to recover a bit and decide what to do next – “ 

“Little Starfighter, take all the time you need.” Ben’s face had nearly crumpled. No one had called him that in…he didn’t know how long. 

Lando had held his gaze and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know we’ve got a lot to talk about, kid. We’ll do it the next time we see each other. For now, you and your girl go rest up somewhere safe.” Ben had nodded jerkily, knowing that if he tried to speak the tears would come. Instead he and Lando clasped hands and hugged, briefly but fiercely.

He’d found Rey in a three-way hug with the pilot and the former stormtrooper. Kylo Ren would have jealously asserted his presence, but Ben hung back, still gently fending off curious glances with the Force, recognizing that Rey needed this catharsis. These men were her brothers-in-arms. They’d fought together. The stormtrooper – Finn – was the first person who’d ever come back for her. All three had been his mother’s protégés in one form or another, and they needed a moment to grieve her absence from this celebration together. To his surprise, Ben had searched his feelings and found a wish to know both of these men better one day…but it probably wouldn’t be any day soon. He himself had left scars on both of them, and he would spend the rest of his life atoning for that, and much else besides.

Still…it was a goal to work toward.

After a few more moments Rey had extricated herself from Finn and Poe’s embrace, murmuring words to them Ben couldn’t hear. Then she’d come back to him and they’d made their way through the base to the Millennium Falcon.

Chewbacca had met them at the bottom of the Falcon’s ramp, to see them off safely.

Ben’s face did crumple then.

***

They’d arrived in Cloud City as Bespin’s sun was setting, and a humanoid attendant had met them and escorted them to a relatively simple but comfortable bedroom in Lando’s estate, indicating a panel on the wall that they could use to comm for food or anything else they needed and then leaving them to their own devices. They’d both been too exhausted to do anything more than shed their boots, Ben’s shirt, and Rey’s belt, armband, and wraps, and collapse onto the bed. He only dimly remembers them getting under the covers in a tangle of limbs before sleep took him. But now…while he doesn’t feel completely recovered from yesterday’s ordeal yet, he does feel his strength and energy beginning to return. One part of his anatomy in particular seems to be fully recovered, and he huffs a rueful laugh. He gazes at Rey’s sleeping form fondly again. Their souls are as entwined and enmeshed as completely as they can possibly be, but he finds he wants to express his love to her physically, too. He wants to kiss her awake, shed the rest of their clothing, and make drowsy love to her in the morning light. But there will be time enough for that later and they both need their rest, so he settles for moving his arms to encircle her, holding her more securely to his side. In time his arousal subsides, the sun moves slightly higher in the sky so it is no longer directly in his eyes, and he sleeps again.

The next time he wakes he’s more or less in the same position, but the sun is no longer visible from the window and the weight that was previously tucked against him is now partially on top of him. He cracks his eyes open to be greeted with the sight of Rey on his bare chest, with her chin pillowed on her folded hands, which are resting just over his sternum. He gets the sense that she’s been studying him while he slept, and she smiles impishly at him, not at all sorry to have been caught. “Hi,” she says, grinning toothily and scrunching her nose in a way he’s rapidly coming to adore.

“Hi,” he says back, moving his arms as if to stretch them. But instead of stretching them, he quickly brings them up around her, caging her in his embrace and lightly tickling her sides. Rey squeals and struggles, and after a minute he relents, stopping his assault on her ribs but keeping his arms firmly around her where she lies atop him. They grin at each other for a moment and then exchange a kiss – their second ever. It’s shorter and simpler than their first, and it feels electrifying and like the most natural thing in the world at the same time – like they’re a couple who’ve been joined for years but still exchange a fond kiss every morning before rising to begin the day. He supposes in a sense that’s exactly what they are.

Rey subsides back down onto his chest and tucks her head under his chin. She’d gone to sleep with her hair still in its customary buns and now they’re in disarray, partly coming down and tangled. Ben sets to work freeing her hair with one hand, the other hand idly smoothing over her shoulder and back. After a few passes it briefly comes to rest on her right upper arm. Her scars hadn’t disappeared when he revived her, the way his had when she’d healed him on Kef Bir _(“Curious; something to research later,”_ the scholarly part of his brain thinks). She’d received this one when they’d fought Snoke’s guards together. He thinks it looks a bit like two hands extended toward one another. Once her hair is free he carefully sets the ties on the bedside table and sets to work gently easing the tangles.

“Feels good,” Rey murmurs as his fingernails scrape gently over her scalp. Almost unbidden, a memory comes which makes his body warm slightly: His mother explaining to him that, on Alderaan, taking someone else’s hair down was seen as a very intimate act. That train of thought leads to other thoughts, and the words are in his mouth that he’d like to make her feel good all over, when suddenly both their stomachs rumble.

Rey bursts out laughing, and her laughter is the most beautiful symphony he’s ever heard.

She rises to go to the wall panel and order some food for them, and he misses her weight anchoring him.

She turns to him, to ask him what he would like to eat, and with her hair swinging free and her eyes bright and alert and with her white shirt doing very little to conceal her body from his gaze, she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

He’s out of the bed and across the room in two strides, blindly keying in a food order before hoisting her into his arms, bearing her laughing back to the bed, and proceeding to kiss her senseless as his body weight presses her into the mattress.

She runs her fingernails over his scalp and tangles her fingers in his hair, and he thinks he might fly apart.

The food arrives all too soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended for this chapter to be approximately 100% cuddling, but Ben insisted that he needed to talk to Uncle Chewie and Unca Wanwo before he and Rey jetted off on the Falcon.
> 
> This chapter was also originally going to be a oneshot, but then the rest of this fic grew up around it. Funny how writing takes on a life of its own! :D
> 
> UPDATE 17 December 2020: To read what happens next during this scene, go [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28034013/chapters/68937246)!


	3. Give Me Myself Again

They spend a few days in Cloud City, as the Falcon is provisioned and has some necessary repairs made to its hyperdrive. They spend those days sightseeing - Bespin is Rey’s first gas giant, and she spends many wide-eyed hours watching how the sun changes the colors of the clouds beneath them. She is full of wonderment and delight at every new thing she sees, and seeing these sights which are familiar to him through her eyes makes them new for Ben, too. After the days of sightseeing, they spend the nights making thorough use of the bed in their quarters, and simply rejoicing in each other’s presence. 

In between the sightseeing and lovemaking, they have some long discussions.

They have a lot to discuss.

Kef Bir. Exogol. Rey’s newly-discovered lineage. (Ben holds her as she weeps anew for the parents she barely remembers.) The revelation that Sidious had been the one tormenting Ben all along. (This time it’s Rey’s turn to hold Ben as he weeps for the child who’d hardly known a moment’s peace.) Leia. (They both weep together then, but the tears are the healing kind.)

They discuss lighter things too. Happy memories from their childhoods – they both have a few, despite everything. Their favorite foods. Planets and moons they’d always dreamed of visiting.

It’s this last topic which leads to the most pressing discussion they need to have: Where to go and what to do once they leave Bespin. 

They decide to go to Tatooine first.

“I think I need to see it,” he tells her one night as they lie skin-to-skin, his front to her back and their legs and arms and hands tangled together. “I need to go there myself and see where it started.”

This is another thing they’ve discussed: the fact that their family legacies have brought them both more pain than joy, and that they should let those parts of their pasts die and fall away. But Ben, despite those words he’d said so pithily to Rey on Ahch-To and again in Snoke’s burning throne room, finds that he wants to know more about the actual people behind the legends. How much does he really know of Anakin Skywalker, the man? He knows embarrassingly little about how his grandfather had lived his life before being brought to Coruscant to train as a Jedi. He knows almost nothing at all about the people who’d raised his mother and uncle – it was almost as if the twins had sprung fully-formed out of the Force, already legendary. That is the weight of the mighty Skywalker legacy he’d been forced to shoulder from birth. But before he lets the past die, he wants to _understand_ it. 

And so they go, landing the Falcon near the old Lars homestead. It’s where Ben’s great-grandmother is buried and where Luke was raised. It’s a modest dwelling with a few outbuildings, built half-underground to protect it from Tatooine’s searing hot days as well as its frigid nights. It’s also half-buried in sand; a dune having encroached and built up over one of its walls in the thirty-odd years that it’s been abandoned. They work together, using the Force and their own labor to clear the sand away; but not before Rey uses a handy piece of scrap-metal to sled down it to the bottom, smiling cheekily up at Ben after doing so.

Dusk is falling by the time they’ve fully unearthed the homestead, and as Tatooine’s binary suns begin to set, they bury Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, sinking them deep into the sand. They’re not unrecoverable – they’ll be there when and if they need to be found again, one or a hundred generations from now. But for now their work is done and they can lie dormant in the ground their wielders’ father and grandmother called home. Then Rey and Ben stand together, his arm around her shoulders and her arm around his waist, watching the sky light up like fire as the suns finally meet the horizon.

***

They tarry on Tatooine for a few weeks; more than long enough for Ben to get his fill of this hot, dusty planet the Skywalkers once called home. But before they can leave, a final necessary task remains. Tatooine is one of only a handful of planets left in the galaxy where kyber crystals can still be found.

They journey separately to different crystal caves, then return to the homestead for several days of meditation. They do this part together, sitting cross-legged across from each other on the floor of the homestead’s main room, allowing the Bond to play freely between them as they learn their crystals and map their intricacies. When the time comes for them to leave Tatooine, each of them has a new lightsaber that is uniquely theirs; unsullied by family legacy or dark undercurrents or oppressive hubris.

Rey’s is yellow; the color of the Sentinels, who forged a middle path between combat and knowledge.

Ben’s is violet; an exceedingly rare color for a Force practitioner’s lightsaber, only wielded by those who had found the balance between Light and Dark. 

***

They go to Naboo next.

It’s a green planet, which pleases Rey. It’s also the homeworld of Ben’s grandmother, Padme Amidala, one of Naboo’s best-loved queens. They spend several days in Theed, learning about this woman who is so fondly remembered here but had paradoxically been an enigma to Ben. Leia had had only the barest memories of her, vouchsafed to her by the Force in the minutes between her own birth and Padme’s death. Whenever Leia spoke of her parents during Ben’s childhood she invariably meant Bail and Breha Organa. So Padme Amidala had always been a mystery to him.

What he learns in Theed is academic: Dates, battles, lists of accomplishments, museum displays, names of relatives. Ben finds he doesn’t mind. Merely being on this planet, in this city, surrounded by understated elegance and rolling green mountains, makes him feel like she is no longer a stranger to him. She never was, to the people who live here. 

Ben asks Rey one night, haltingly, if she wants to find out more about Sheev Palpatine while they’re here. Because Naboo was his homeworld too. Rey’s answer is so prompt and prepared that he knows she’s been asking herself this same question. “He tried to claim me. That doesn’t mean I have to claim him.” She smiles at him then. “He’s nothing to do with my present or my future. He can stay on Exogol, where he belongs.”

This is the last time they ever discuss Rey’s grandfather.

***

They leave Theed and go to Naboo’s famed lake country. Rey had made some inquiries in the city and had found a landowner willing to rent them a small house on an indefinite lease. (The bagful of credits she’d had the presence of mind to collect from her quarters on Ajan Kloss had helped.) It has everything they need – a stocked kitchen and a bedroom with a real bed and a modest veranda overlooking the lake, and for the first time in a very long time they both allow themselves to just _be_.

They spar with their new lightsabers, and hike through the hills and meadows nearby, and sleep curled around one another in the bed. Ben teaches Rey to swim in the lake, and once she learns, she can’t get enough of it. Having all this water to simply _play_ in will never cease to be marvelous to this child of the desert. They spend hours out on the veranda, simply taking in the beauty of the lake and the mountains. Once or twice they move their bedding outside and sleep under the stars, with the small waves rolling onto the lakeshore as their lullaby.

As the months pass they begin to speak of the future. The temptation is strong to simply stay here forever; to live out their lives here, raise children here. But they are the two most powerful Force-sensitive beings in the galaxy, and there are other Force-sensitive beings out there who need help and guidance. They can both sense them: Children who are frightened and alone, just as they once were. Adults whose peers are both a little awed by and a little afraid of them. Beings who are attuned to the Force but lack the resources to learn more.

And so they discuss at length how to go about this task, taking their time to work through all the possible scenarios and the merits and drawbacks of each. The conclusion they come to is that simplicity is best. They’ll find a suitable world to set up a school, and they’ll teach both knowledge of the Force and its practical uses. They’ll teach aspects of both the Jedi and Sith philosophies, as well as those which fit neatly into neither. Central to their teachings will be the simple truth that the Force is in all things and belongs to no one: not the Jedi, not the Sith, not exclusively to those of exalted heritage. Love and attachment will not be forbidden – it is what saved both of them, after all.

They’re lounging in a meadow surrounded by waterfalls one afternoon. Ben’s head is in Rey’s lap and she is braiding his hair in neat rows across his scalp. They’re a far cry from the Alderaanian-style braids Ben had worked into her hair earlier, but the intimacy of the act is what has always mattered to them, rather than the aesthetics of the end result. She’s finishing the last braid when he asks her. “Do you want to get married?”

She feels a frisson of embarrassment across the Bond – he feels a little silly asking her. They are a Force Dyad, they share a single soul; they are the most tightly bonded it’s possible for two beings to be, and a marriage ceremony won’t change that. But he wants an outward symbol of their love to show the galaxy. The Bond is theirs, precious, and only for them. A wedding will tell the world that he is hers and she is his.

So she smiles down at him, kisses him between his eyes, and says yes.

Rey fashions rings for them out of spare lightsaber parts, and they go into Theed and find an official willing to marry them on short notice. They marry in the open air, as the sun is beginning to bend toward the horizon, with curious and indulgent passers-by as their witnesses. They had briefly discussed both taking a new family name, but keeping Han Solo’s name had felt right to both of them. This is one aspect of the past they both want to keep close. And so when the ceremony concludes, they are officially Ben and Rey Solo.

They spend their wedding night on their veranda in a nest of blankets and bodies and mouths under Naboo’s sky, and in the morning they watch the sun rise over the mountains, wrapped in a sheet and each other’s arms, the Bond singing between them. This is the day that they’ll leave Naboo and start looking for a planet to make their home and their school. And for the first time since he was a small boy, Ben finds that he’s actively looking forward to the future. Rey is by his side, and they are both loved and valued and _free_ in ways they’d never dreamed of.

Later that day, possessions packed and stowed, he sits in the co-pilot’s seat while Rey pilots the Falcon out of Naboo’s atmosphere. Once she sets the coordinates for the first system on their list to investigate, she looks over at Ben and takes his hand, running her thumb over his wedding band. He grins at her and raises her hand to his lips for a kiss. Rey grins back as she engages the hyperdrive, and then they both face forward to watch the stars blur past them into the muted blue of hyperspace, hands still clasped between them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read, bookmarked, commented on, and left kudos on this story! This is the first multi-chapter fic I have ever written, and knowing that people were reading it and enjoying it helped spur me on to finish it.
> 
> One thing that brought me awe and comfort in the days after TROS's release was the fact that every Reylo author I have ever bookmarked on AO3 is writing a fix-it fic, and I am so grateful to have been able to contribute to that body of work. 
> 
> Luminous beings are we.


	4. Author's Note

If you're looking for the epilogue that used to be here, it is now posted within my work titled "Little Earthquakes Ficlet Collection," which is linked down below. Happy reading! 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Little Earthquakes Ficlet Collection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28034013/chapters/68677632)

**Author's Note:**

> My own personal headcanon is that the Voices of Jedi Past were speaking to Ben at the same time they were speaking to Rey. Because Ben deserved to hear his grandfather's true voice for once in his life, goddammit.
> 
> Come say hi on Tumblr if you'd like! lochtayboatsong


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